A Perfect Vacation

Granted "A Perfect Vacation" (aka "Awaken") had scored relatively low here on IMDb and given the ensemble of cast that starred in this movie, I just wasn't sure whether or not I would sit down to watch it. I ended up doing so, solely because it had Daryl Hannah listed on the cast list.

The movie starts out well enough, although the storyline didn't really make all that much sense in terms of being realistic or particularly entertaining. The storyline in "A Perfect Vacation" was weak and vague, and most often seemed like a muddy mess of random ideas thrown out there and put into a not particularly coherent order.

The setting of the movie was quite good, with the jungle and the Island. So there were some nice enough visuals throughout the movie, although this was hardly enough to make up for the many shortcomings of the movie.

There are some familiar names on the cast list, including Edward Furlong, Vinnie Jones, Christa Campbell and Jason London, although these are hardly talents that I am overly impressed with much less fan of these people. Alongside these were Daryl Hannah, Robert Davi and also David Keith, the two selling points for the movie in my opinion.

25 minutes into the movie and I already found my interest in the movie quickly waning and my attention span started to drift elsewhere. But still I decided to stick with the movie and see how it would turn out.

The movie is very predictable, and of course sharks would show up once people were getting off the Island to escape the horrible ordeal that takes place on the Island.

The characters in the movie were adequate, although there was not much of any character development going on. But the characters have enough details and personalities to keep remaining interesting enough to bear witness to as the movie trotted on in a very monotone pace.

"A Perfect Vacation" was just barely entertaining enough for a single viewing, but trust me, it was a hard pressed one. More than once was I tempted to get up and find something else to watch. Should you make it through the entire movie the first time, chances of you returning to it a second time is as likely as snow on the sun.

I can't believe that inattention to common sense detail. Really awful direction. Very poorly crafted fight scenes. Awful tactics. Fingers inside trigger guards. Movements around corners like sleep walkers. Stupid stupid action. Could this movie really make money?

How could people stranded on an island have such good hair? How was it possible that a guy on the island head was perfectly shaved every day for weeks? What is up with those pants on the protagonist ? Are we supposed to believe the pants just got ripped that way? And why was she wearing dog tags? She was never in the military?

HIRE ME!

I would provide the REAL LIFE direction to make this thing believable.

Dear sweet Jesus, please please please, no one ever hire this director or writer again!

Not too bad for some fairly easy entertainment and intrigue - if you can tolerate the unnecessarily gratuitous violence and blood which at times is pretty sickening for me. But when the intrigue ends about half way through when the mystery is uncovered, the film degenerates into comedic posturing by a ridiculous number of body guards unnecessarily threatening a couple of defenceless men and a morally bankrupt story line which could so easily have raised the tenor of the film if it had included an ounce of humanity. The only attempt at this, with a contrived reconciliation which flew in the face of all normal sensibilities was promptly snuffed out along with the most of the robotic characters that behaved as though they were supposed to have been in a sci fi movie. Even the attempt at romance was more like a pair of the 'Wooden Tops' getting together. An ill conceived plot that started well but completely failed to deliver.

Let's start with the obvious - this is not a mystery movie and most defenitely not a horror movie. It is a very basic action movie that has a story that has been done a million times before - it adds nothing new and I can't really understand why someone felt the need to do this garbage. The lead actress is annoing and has like one expression.

The movie it self is not badly done, they had some budget clearly. Too bad they didn't have a script.

What a bad movie. Bad plot, bad script, bad directing, bad acting, bad editing…just bad. Except for Daryl Hannah.

But this movie is one of those movies that is bad, but good. This is one of those movies that can't be taken seriously, yet is interesting enough keep watching. It has all the clichéd moments and plot lines, yet is just far enough away from cliché to be worth watching. There is no nudity, the bathing scene is, in context of other movies of the genre, humorous rather than sexy. There were a couple of moments of Commando, but then Vinnie Jones reappeared on screen and I couldn't take the movie that seriously (and I tend to have a fondness for Vinnie Jones movies for some reason).

Overall, this is one of those movies where details are almost completely unimportant, and evidenced by my texting throughout, and not feeling like I missed anything. Of course, as a fan of the Lost series, I did see a few similarities. And like that show, there were a few major story questions that went unanswered. But they did not take away from the overall entertainment. And as previously mentioned, the entertainment was provided by the just-off-cliché moments and plot twists (though one was clichéd).

This is one of those movies that could be a hidden b-movie extravaganza. It has the cast, and the heroine, Natalie Burn, appears to be on the rise. If you really have nothing better to watch on a Saturday afternoon, this is the movie. But really, wait until Ms. Burn becomes well known to watch it.

(btw - the rating I gave is for execution of apparent intent. Compared to much more serious-intent movies, and this is more of a 3 star.)